The roar came again, closer, then split like it had learned a new trick.

  Isaac felt it in his teeth first, a low vibration that made his jaw want to click the wrong way.

  Zoya didn’t slow.

  She didn’t speed up either.

  She ran like the world was a hallway and she’d already been told she wasn’t allowed to stop in it.

  “Brimwick had a sound for everything,” she said, breath steady enough to be insulting. “That one meant, lock your doors, then act offended you heard it.”

  Isaac kept pace because he didn’t have another option. His wings were folded tight, plates tucked in, not for shame, just for clearance, like a man moving through a crowded street with something sharp strapped to his back.

  Canopy bloom spilled colour through branches overhead, reef-bright and busy, like the forest was awake on purpose. Warm mist drifted in slow bands, peach into cyan into bruised violet, and the air was full of hoverers, wing-ticks, chirrs, tiny lives making choices out loud.

  He swallowed and felt rough stubble scrape under his jaw, the kind of small, ugly proof that his body had been around long enough to grow tired in repeating places.

  “Did acting offended help?” he asked.

  “It helped adults feel like they did something,” Zoya said. “Brimwick ran on fear. Pretending was just the uniform.”

  Zoya wiped her mouth with the back of her wrist and kept going.

  Her fingers were dirty, and under that dirt Isaac caught a pale smear on her nails, chalky and stubborn, like the bellhouse board had stained her years.

  He didn’t mention it.

  He didn’t mention most things.

  It was easier to survive when you didn’t name how much you noticed.

  Zoya kept talking because silence made her eyes go too sharp.

  “The worst food wasn’t the grey bread,” she said. “It was soup.”

  Isaac blinked shimmer-dust off his lashes. “Soup is soup.”

  Zoya made a noise between a laugh and a cough. “No. It smelled like someone else’s kitchen. Like it had a better life first.”

  “That’s a weird thing to miss,” Isaac said before he could stop himself.

  Zoya didn’t look at him. “I didn’t say I miss it.”

  “You did,” Isaac said.

  “Shut up,” she replied, and there was no heat in it. Just the way you swat a bug off your sleeve.

  The roar came again, and this time it wasn’t one throat.

  It was answers.

  Isaac felt his skin go tight.

  Ahead, the trees thinned. Not a clearing, not kind, just space where the ribs of roots arched out of the ground like something huge had once tried to climb out and then changed its mind. Between those ribs, the ground showed through in bands, faint fractal colour laid into the loam in steps, repeating the same curve again and again like it was pressed there.

  Hoverers drifted along those bands in lanes, not random, not curious. Like they knew rules.

  Zoya slowed half a step, just long enough for Isaac to see what she saw.

  Glassjaws.

  Not one.

  A pack.

  They moved low and fast, bodies slick with an oil-sheen that caught canopy bloom and turned it mean. Their jaws were wrong, clear in places like crystal had replaced bone, refraction bending violet and pink into sharp little lies. Teeth caught the bloom-light and threw it back in splinters.

  They weren’t scattered.

  They were arranged.

  Like they’d practised being a problem.

  Zoya exhaled once. “Oh. That’s not one.”

  Isaac’s stomach did the small drop. Not the deep chain, not the threshold. Just the body recognising that numbers mattered.

  “That’s… a lot of teeth,” he said.

  Zoya’s voice went flat in the way it did when she was about to say something honest by accident. “Brimwick would’ve called it a lesson and made everyone watch.”

  Isaac’s mouth twisted. “I’m starting to hate your hometown.”

  “Yeah,” Zoya said. “Get in line.”

  One Glassjaw lifted its head and opened its mouth.

  The roar wasn’t sound.

  It was a signal.

  The pack answered like a single organism.

  Zoya didn’t give Isaac instructions.

  She didn’t tell him where to step or where to stand.

  She just moved, linehook in her hand, rope snapping out with a clean, ugly confidence that came from doing the same motion a thousand times in a town where one mistake meant you became entertainment.

  Isaac moved too.

  His wings unfolded enough to matter.

  The plates clicked.

  A half-beat of delay landed between the click and the violence, a pause where his body gathered itself like his back decided.

  Then impact.

  One wing chopped down in a rigid arc, not graceful, not clever. It hit like something built to end arguments. Glassjaw flesh tore, clear blood spraying in bright beads that caught the canopy bloom before they fell.

  Isaac felt the cost late, like always. A burn up his back, a bite in his ribs, the stabiliser muscles under his shoulder blades lighting up in protest.

  Zoya’s rope wrapped a Glassjaw’s leg and yanked.

  The creature didn’t fly.

  It just lost the right to decide where its weight went.

  Isaac’s second wing came through, shorter, constrained by the roots and tree trunks. He didn’t sweep, he couldn’t. He brought it in like scissors closing.

  Glass cracked.

  A Glassjaw shrieked.

  Zoya’s voice cut through the noise, not tactical, just disbelief. “You’re kidding.”

  Isaac grimaced as another Glassjaw snapped at his knee and met the edge of a wing plate instead.

  “Nope,” he said, because it came out, because words sometimes did that.

  The sound the Glassjaw’s teeth made on crystal-metal was wrong. A scrape like someone biting a bottle.

  Zoya flinched hard enough to show it. “That sound is disgusting.”

  “Yeah,” Isaac said, and drove his wing forward again. “Agreed.”

  The pack tried to turn them into a corner.

  It didn’t work.

  Not because they were clever.

  Because Isaac was bigger than the logic of a pack animal and Zoya had spent her whole life refusing corners.

  A Glassjaw lunged for Zoya’s calf.

  Her rope jerked, her hookknife flashed, and the creature’s jaw met metal and regret.

  Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

  Isaac caught the next one with a wing-wall, pinned it against a root rib, and chopped down.

  It went still.

  The pack broke the way all confident things break, sudden and ugly.

  One more Glassjaw hesitated.

  Isaac saw that hesitation and hated it for pretending to be thought.

  His wing came down.

  The Glassjaw’s body folded.

  Life held its breath.

  Hoverers lifted as one, then settled again, pretending they hadn’t reacted.

  Zoya stood with her rope in her hand, chest rising and falling like she’d been running for her life long before today.

  Isaac looked for the heart because his body had started to think in that direction now.

  He found it where the largest Glassjaw had fallen, tucked behind ribs that weren’t ribs, pulsing faintly under the skin like a small trapped light.

  Core heart.

  Dangerous.

  Necessary.

  He crouched and dug it out with fingers that still didn’t feel fully his. The heart was slick, warm, too alive.

  Zoya watched him without stepping back.

  That was new.

  Not brave, exactly.

  More like she’d decided panicking was boring.

  Isaac crushed it.

  The heart gave with a wet snap.

  Red powder bloomed in his palm like a bruise turning to dust.

  He inhaled without meaning to.

  The powder folded into him.

  It didn’t go into lungs the way air did. It went inward, down the channels that weren’t supposed to exist, into the place behind his ribs where the mark lived.

  Nine rings flared.

  Heat rolled outward from his centre like a wave, not fire, something older, more like a furnace remembering it was allowed to work.

  The fractal bands underfoot stepped once, the colour shifting in discrete increments like the ground noticed weight and recalculated.

  His wing plates seated with a clean click.

  His eyes refocused like someone had wiped grime off a lens.

  Zoya stared at him and didn’t move away. Her mouth pulled into something that wasn’t a smile.

  “If you did that up top,” she said, “they’d build a cage and sell tickets.”

  Isaac looked at his hand, still stained red. “People paid to watch that?”

  “People paid to watch anything as long as it wasn’t them,” Zoya said. “Executions, trials, inspections. They called it closure when they wanted it to sound gentle.”

  Isaac’s jaw tightened. “So the bracer wasn’t protection. It was status.”

  Zoya’s gaze cut to her wrist for half a second, like her skin remembered weight even when she wasn’t thinking about it. “Custody,” she said. “Don’t insult theft by calling it fashion.”

  They didn’t stop moving.

  They started walking again before the blood could cool, because stopping was how the Core collected you.

  The roar had been the lead. It had been bait in a way, just not the kind with a hook.

  Now there were smaller sounds ahead, not roar, more like the pack’s leftover chatter, distant clicks and throat-grinds, and the steady wing-buzz of hoverers keeping their lanes.

  Zoya kept talking like she’d been waiting for the fight to end so she could get back to the real thing.

  “Luke’s family were borrowers,” she said.

  Isaac repeated it without thinking. “Borrowers.”

  Zoya flinched so fast Isaac almost didn’t see it, like her nerves had snapped on a wire.

  Then she controlled it.

  Her voice went measured. “Don’t say it like it’s neutral. That’s their word.”

  Isaac blinked. “What’s your word?”

  Zoya’s mouth twisted. “Stolen,” she said. “With manners. With a smile.”

  “And scheduled visits,” Isaac said.

  “Scheduled audits,” Zoya corrected, but not him. The word. “And you still said thank you after.”

  Isaac frowned. “Why?”

  Zoya laughed once, short. “Because if you didn’t, they wrote it down.”

  “Who did?” Isaac asked.

  Zoya’s eyes went distant for a heartbeat, like she was looking at a bellhouse board instead of a forest of root ribs and glowing fungus-mat. “People with paper,” she said. “Ink. Bitter soap. That stamp smell. You could wash your hands raw and still smell it on your skin.”

  Isaac swallowed. The air down here tasted like sap-sweet mineral and hot iron, with a metallic undertone that made his tongue feel like a coin.

  “You said they wrote it down,” he said. “Like it mattered.”

  “It always mattered,” Zoya replied. “Everything mattered to them. Not because they cared. Because counting makes people feel like gods.”

  Isaac made a noise that might’ve been agreement and might’ve been disgust.

  Zoya heard it anyway.

  “They sold everything,” she said, and her voice ran ahead of itself. “Everything. Even the idea that you were safe, even that, even that part.”

  Isaac cut in without thinking. “If you behaved.”

  Zoya’s mouth tightened. “Yeah,” she said. “If you behaved.”

  High in the canopy, something huge shifted. Lantern fronds dimmed in a slow wave, like an animal’s shadow passed over the whole forest at once. The hoverers climbed, then settled lower again, pretending they hadn’t just flinched.

  Isaac didn’t comment.

  Zoya didn’t either.

  They kept going.

  They killed again.

  Not like the first time when they flailed and learned.

  This time it was quick and ugly and clean.

  A breathling came out of crystal brush with a glass-slick hide and too many limbs. The brush glowed coral and lime where it had been sliced, living mineral filaments crawling back toward each other like they wanted to heal.

  Isaac tried to swing a full arc and couldn’t.

  Trees denied him space like a rulebook.

  His wings were giant swords and the world refused to be impressed.

  He ended up chopping short, a rigid slam, wing plate biting into flesh at an awkward angle.

  It worked.

  It cost him anyway.

  He felt the stabiliser burn. Felt a plate scrape bark and chip at the edge.

  Zoya glanced at the chip and made a face like it offended her personally.

  “I have two giant swords,” Isaac muttered, “and I can’t swing them.”

  Zoya snorted. “Welcome to my entire life.”

  “Your life had swords?” Isaac asked.

  Zoya’s laugh was quiet. “Rules,” she said. “Same thing, just uglier.”

  They killed again.

  This one almost silent.

  A familiar shape, lower to the ground, glassjaw-adjacent but smaller, fast and twitchy. It stalked them like it had learned it could.

  It didn’t get to.

  Isaac pinned it with a wing-wall and the creature made one startled sound, then none.

  Zoya knelt and dug out the heart without ceremony, flicked it toward Isaac like she was passing him a tool.

  Isaac caught it.

  He crushed.

  This time the camera of it shifted.

  No bloom described, no powder seen.

  Just heat.

  A ripple outward.

  The colour bands underfoot tightened for a beat, then released, like a muscle.

  The hoverers lane-shifted without panic, sliding sideways in a clean line, giving the space around Isaac’s chest a wide berth like the air had been told not to touch him.

  His eyes refocused so sharply the world felt too clean for half a breath, like someone had tightened the seams of reality.

  Zoya watched him and didn’t step back.

  Then she did the thing that made it feel like a trap town again, like a bellhouse hallway.

  She lifted her chin, eyes blank, voice bright and false for exactly one sentence.

  “Dear inspector, today we did not kill anything illegal at all.”

  Isaac’s mouth twitched, then flattened back out.

  Zoya’s gaze flicked to his face like she hated that she needed jokes to breathe.

  “Brimwick children used to dare each other to touch the glass after it fed,” she said, and the humour drained out of the line like water.

  Isaac glanced at her. “Did anyone win?”

  Zoya’s mouth went tight. “The Core always wins,” she said. “Kids just found out first.”

  They walked again.

  They talked again.

  The kills became punctuation instead of paragraphs.

  Isaac found something in the rhythm he didn’t like admitting.

  He was learning his own body by using it.

  He was learning his own mind by listening to Zoya talk.

  Zoya filled the spaces his missing memories should have lived in, not with comfort, with detail.

  With how a town sounded when it pretended to be a town.

  With what people did for fun when fun was illegal.

  With what words got you taken.

  “You ever think it’s messed up,” Zoya said suddenly, “you’re learning to be a person by killing things?”

  Isaac stared ahead, shimmer-dust catching on his lashes, and answered honestly because it was easier than dodging.

  “I’m learning to be a person because you won’t shut up,” he said.

  Zoya made an offended noise. “Rude.”

  “Accurate,” Isaac said.

  Zoya’s mouth twitched. “Yeah. Fair.”

  They kept moving.

  It wasn’t until later, after the fifth heart, after Isaac’s wings had seated and reseated like the world was slowly accepting what he was becoming, that something pale and geometric appeared between trunks.

  At first Isaac thought it was a gap in the canopy bloom.

  Then he realised nothing down here was sky.

  It was the pyramid.

  Far enough away to be an idea.

  Clean enough to feel wrong.

  The bloom-light around it looked rinsed, like colour forgot its job. Hoverers kept their lanes wide of it, as if an invisible line had been drawn and the ecosystem agreed not to cross.

  Its surface caught lightning from somewhere above or inside the Core and threw it back without distortion, like it hated fingerprints, like it hated the concept of anything touching it.

  Zoya didn’t stop to stare.

  She didn’t let wonder leak.

  She looked at it like it was a person she already didn’t trust.

  “That thing looks like it was built by someone who hates fingerprints,” she said.

  Isaac’s jaw buzzed faintly, a pressure at the hinge, like the Core was whispering through bone again.

  “It looks like it doesn’t need believers,” he said.

  Zoya’s smile was sharp. “It looks like it would eat believers.”

  Isaac almost laughed.

  Almost.

  He didn’t trust laughter down here.

  Not yet.

  They were mid-conversation, Zoya explaining borrowers like she could say the word without tasting bile, when her wrist went hot.

  Not warm.

  Hot.

  The bracer.

  The metal didn’t just heat. It loaded. Isaac felt it without touching it, like the air around her forearm tightened.

  Zoya’s breath caught. Her hand snapped to her wrist on instinct, not dramatic, just reflex.

  “Stop,” she said, and it came out rough.

  The hum sharpened fast. Not loud, just high and mean, a note that made Isaac’s teeth ache in one spot.

  Then it let go.

  The bracer dumped Breath outward in one hard pulse.

  No beam.

  No light show.

  A wave.

  It hit Isaac in the chest like getting shoved by something heavier than a person. His boots skidded. His wings flared on instinct and still he went back, plates scraping bark. Zoya got knocked off her feet, shoulder hitting the ground hard enough to knock air out of her.

  The canopy reacted late, like the world had to decide what it just felt.

  Trunks took it first, a dull tremor that ran through bark and into Isaac’s soles.

  Then the pollen came down.

  Not a gentle drift.

  A heavy fall, clumping wet and bright, peppering shoulders, catching in Isaac’s wing seams, sticking to Zoya’s hairline like handfuls of glowing grit thrown from above.

  Hoverers broke their lanes and climbed all at once. Lantern fronds snapped shut in pockets, fast and scared.

  Silence followed the wave for half a beat, like everything small had agreed not to make a sound.

  Isaac pushed up on one hand, chest tight. “Zoya.”

  She was already moving.

  Not stumbling.

  Scrambling to her knees, one palm on the dirt, the other locked around her bracer like it had bitten her.

  Her eyes were wide, not with awe, with calculation.

  “No,” she said. “No, no, no.”

  Isaac got a foot under him. “What was that.”

  Zoya swallowed hard. Her voice came out low and sharp.

  “It vented,” she said.

  Isaac stared at her wrist.

  The bracer sat there looking normal again, cold and innocent, like it hadn’t just thrown them.

  “That means,” Isaac started.

  “That means they felt it,” Zoya snapped, and there was no theatrics in it, just panic she refused to dress up. “That’s the whole point. You don’t get to feed it in private.”

  She shoved herself fully upright. Her hand shook once, then steadied.

  “It’s not supposed to fill that fast,” she said. “Luke gets it for practice. For show. For controlled use. Not for… this.” Her eyes flicked to the forest, like the direction of “up” could be seen through roots and colour. “Not for someone trying to survive on it.”

  Isaac’s throat went tight. “So it’s a signal.”

  Zoya nodded once, hard.

  “A flare,” she said. “A marker. Whatever you want to call it. They’ll know the bracer is active, and they’ll know it’s not Luke doing his polite little drills.”

  Isaac felt his stomach drop.

  “And if they come for it,” he said.

  Zoya’s jaw clenched so hard it jumped. “They come for the bracer,” she said. “And they come for whoever took it.”

  A beat.

  Her voice dropped another notch.

  “And if they can’t find me,” she said, “they go to the only hand they’ve ever seen on it.”

  Isaac didn’t ask who. He already knew.

  Zoya wiped pollen off her mouth with the back of her wrist like it disgusted her, like the world had marked her.

  “We move,” she said.

  Now.